Mate Desktop - Gnome 3 And Unity Alternative

Okay I had to create this thread in order to avoid the thread tangent posts for mate desktop. If you're tired of unity interface in ubuntu or using gnome 3 out of frustration then cheer up and use mate desktop. It is not official as of now and there are some random betas out there but as this is based on gnome 2 you get to use the desktop wihtout any issues. I have found that they're planning to retain the top nav bar with options of applications, places and system common in their future release. I don't know how much they did progress with the gnome 3 porting but it looks like they are planning for the next update very soon.

As of now you can look at their official site here. They have some nice screenshot i gues mix of mint and some other desktops. You can also checkout more screenshots on their wiki page. They have about 5 images of the desktop and it seems they are looking good. You may notice that theyre keeping a lot of things from gnome without change. Only difference is that they';re adding more GTK3 code with some minor graphics updates. Forum isn't active yet but it seems most of the maintainers or developers are reading the comments passed to the threads.

How I see this desktop environement? I think this is good opportunity to use the gnome code and replace the top nav bar with something they had in version 2. Not all laptops and desktops are going to be touch screen in next 3 years. So there is no point in using the slingshot over menu interface. I do think that slingshot is good for the touchscreen and that's all.

I am looking forward to some of the good changes in the mate desktop. I hope it replaces the worst side of the gnome soon.Till then I am sure like me there are many other users waiting for the software to mature and be more usable just like gnome.